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Merle White
is editorial director
of Interweave's
Gem & Jewelry Group
and editor-in-chief
of Lapidary Journal
Jewelry Artist.
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Attractive and Inexpensive
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Unusual cabochon gems can make your jewelry designs stand out like this dendrite in quartz pendant. Photo courtesy of Village Silversmith. |
"When in doubt, guess quartz." That's what I tell a jewelry making friend of mine who periodically shows up with some attractive and usually inexpensive gem material hoping for an ID.
Of course this is not a scientific test. You cannot appraise a stone this way. And it isn't always the correct answer. But very often it is, and in the world of offbeat gems, it is an excellent place to start.
Endless Varieties
As many of you probably know, quartz is the most common mineral species found on earth, so there is a heck of a lot of it out there. It occurs all over the place and in different situations, and the result is that it has a lot of different looks and a lot of different names: rock crystal, rose quartz, leopard jasper, Botswana agate, chrysoprase, carnelian, and amethyst, just to name a very few--but there are over 700 named agates alone! One of the things I love best about wandering through the endless maze of gem dealers at the Tucson shows in February, in fact, is keeping any eye out for interesting and unusual stones, and many of them are quartz.
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| If you're interested in making jewelry with stones, consider quartz. The varieties are endless. Above, quartz cabochons with manganese and chlorite inclusions. Below, quartz cabochon colored with a combination of malachite and chrysocolla. Photos by Jim Lawson. |
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It's colorless when pure but takes on a wide range of colors and an almost endless variety of patterns when it's not, which is very often the case. Some of it is transparent enough to be facet quality, some shows a glimmering translucency, and some stones are opaque. In all its incarnations, quartz takes an excellent polish and is not easily scratched or chipped when worn in jewelry.
Easy to Find, Yet Unusual to Look At
Because it is plentiful (and because of the vagaries of the gem market, which I won't get into here), quartz gems are often unlike anything else and are generally inexpensive, easy to find, and a good buy. This is also why so many of the stones my friend shows me turn out to be quartz, just like I said (and I do love being right).
While you can find some kind of quartz gems at any gem show and all over the web, you never know what kind of quartz gem you'll find at any given place. It's always worth a look because you could always stumble upon material from a new source that's just a little different, or material from an old source that hasn't been on the market for decades and won't be around again any time soon.
Even at Bead Fest
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The faceted, transparent varieties of quartz are wonderful--I'm a sucker for the purple of amethyst--but it's the unexpected patterns of agate and jasper cabochons that keep me looking for something new. Crazy lace agate courtesy of Gary B. Wilson. |
Strange as it may seem, I've found some fabulous quartz and other cool stones at bead shows, particularly the one Lapidary Journal launched almost a decade ago: Bead Fest Philadelphia (okay, truth in promotion, I've worked at this show so much I've practically lived at it and had lots of time to walk the floor, but even so, I have found some wonderful gems there). This year there are several gem dealers exhibiting who will be selling cabs and freeforms as well as drilled beads, like Horizon Minerals, Gary B. Wilson, Village Silversmiths, Dakota Stones, S & S Lapidary, Dikra Gems, Unique Russian Minerals, and others, not to mention a few suppliers who carry jewelry tools as well as beading stuff.
If you're in the mood for a little low-key gem prowling in the environs of Philadelphia come August 20, 21, and 22 (workshops run August 18-22 and include a number of metalsmithing as well as bead classes), give Bead Fest Philadelphia a whirl. You never know what you might find--quartz- and otherwise.